Why linking Instagram posts is better than sharing

The Scoop

ESPN, The Economist and other media companies are changing how they share Instagram photos on Facebook,
and are seeing 20-30% increase in engagement on Instagram.

A Traffic Problem

Sharing on Facebook is a one way street and does not drive traffic to your Instagram posts inside Instagram.
As professional marketers, we would love to share our Instagram posts and have those shares
drive traffic into our post on Instagram, where people can like, comment and follow the account.

A Partial Solution

Social teams big and small are ditching the share button inside the Instagram app and are manually
grabbing the link to their latest Instagram post on the Instagram website. They then
go to Facebook or Buffer and craft their post using the link. The result is
a post that has a photo and when clicked, opens up on instagram.com in a mobile web browser. But
even this feels incomplete. Shouldn’t it open inside the Instagram app and have click analytics?

A Better Way

We saw this trend here at AppAction a year ago while working at Facebook
and have built a set of tools for individuals, small businesses and brands to automate this better
way of sharing. And like any good marketer, we took it a step further! Our links
actually open inside the Instagram App on mobile, and have full analytics on likes,
comments and follows driven from your sharing. We are excited to have incredible accounts onboard
like NBA on ESPN and professional photographer Trey Ratcliff and are welcoming 100s of new accounts a day.
Come check us out!